Nova OT Jake Prus to donate bone marrow

One might think that Villanova right tackle Jake Prus views protecting Walter Payton Award-winning quarterback John Robertson as his primary job this fall.

Not quite.

While the 6-foot-4, 300-pound senior from Woodstown in Salem County takes football seriously, he's even more focused on his fellow man. So on Sept. 10, Prus will spend eight hours at Hahnemann Hospital donating bone marrow to help save the life of a 65-year-old man he has never met.

"It's cool being able to save someone's life by doing so little on my part, you know what I mean?" said Prus, who started all 14 games last season. "It makes me feel good because that's what I want to do. I'm going into the medical field because I want to help people this way, so getting some pre-exposure to that is always a good thing."

Prus will play in Thursday's season opener at Connecticut. However, there are side effects to donating bone marrow - for instance, swelling of the spleen - that will prevent him from playing against Fordham (Sept. 12) and Delaware (Sept. 19). The following week, the Wildcats face Penn (Sept. 24), then have a bye week. He should return to the starting lineup no later than Oct. 10 (home vs. William and Mary.

He'll most likely be replaced in the starting lineup by 6-4, 345-pound freshman Ethan Greenidge.

No one is more supportive of Prus' decision than Wildcats coach Andy Talley, who has been involved with the National Bone Marrow Donor Program since 1992. He leads a drive every spring that seeks to find donors. Nationally, the odds are one in 20,000 of finding a donor for those with life-threatening diseases.

"He's on a mission to save a life - you couldn't ask for a better guy to do it," Talley said. "We're going to miss him, but look at what he's doing for another human being. He wants to do it."

Prus was first called in June and expected to make the donation back then. But the donation can only be made when the recipient is healthy enough to receive it.

"I thought I was going to miss just three weeks of camp," said Prus, who will spend about eight hours hooked up to a machine that filters his blood. "But when you are called you have to go."

This is the first time that a Villanova football player will miss a game because of donating. In 2009, when the Wildcats won their first national championship, two-sport star Matt Szczur - an all-American wide receiver who now plays for the Chicago Cubs - donated after the football season. This forced him to miss 10 baseball games.

@JmitchInquirer